


Not Just the Once, But a Thousand Times

by Tor_Raptor



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Gen, Grief/Mourning, IronDad and SpiderSon, Nightmares, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24170032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tor_Raptor/pseuds/Tor_Raptor
Summary: I watched you die not just the once, but a thousand times. Now you’re before me, very much alive, and I will do everything in my power not to watch it again.Or, what went through Tony’s head during that mid-battle hug.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	1. The First Thousand

**Author's Note:**

> Quarantine has left me with some crazy jumbled feelings and way too much time on my hands. Which, in all honesty, is a fantastic combination for a fanfiction author. I tried my hand at first person, which I don't use all that often, and it made this way more potent than I ever thought it could be. This is what happens when you write at one in the morning after crying four times during one Spiderman movie.

I watched you die not just the once, but a thousand times.

The first time was the worst, but then every time after was worse than that. Over and over again, reinforcing the same fact, ramming it down my throat as if I hadn't already swallowed that bitter knowledge every single day since the first. Every time left me breathless and shaky, drowned by the overwhelming sense that I failed you in the one duty I set out to uphold above all others.

The first time I was surrounded by strangers, encamped on the ruined home of the monster trying to destroy us, in the middle of the vast abyss of space. You were the only thing familiar to me in a universe that had just expanded with the speed and destructive power of an explosive shockwave.

I knew that I failed as soon as the wizard surrendered to save me. His stubbornness was my only hope of keeping the stone from Thanos because I knew that even all of my strength wouldn't be nearly enough. He surrendered, and saved my life just to ruin it.

They died first. The strangers. They crumbled one by one and blew away in the wind. Strange said it was the only way, right before he turned into sawdust. The only way to what? Certainly not to win. This wasn't winning; half of all people were _dying_ because he gave up the stone. I counted them as they dissolved. Drax, Mantis, Quill, Strange. Four people. There were seven of us on that planet, so I foolishly hoped that the devastation would stop there. Statistically speaking, no one else should have gone. And then I heard you call out. The stab of your terrified voice dwarfed the pain of Thanos running me through with my own broken suit.

The undying _trust_ in your tone, your faith in my ability to _fix_ this…it was completely unfounded. I, Tony Stark, self-proclaimed mechanic and engineer extraordinaire, couldn't fix the only thing that mattered. I could feel you trembling as you collapsed in my arms. Or maybe that was you fighting to hold your particles together as the power of the stones tried to rip them apart. You told me over and over again that you didn't want to go. As many times as you said it, I thought it twice as many.

You took so much longer to go than any of the others. I'm not entirely sure why; however, I am sure that didn't make it easier for either of us. You fought it. With everything you had. The spider superpowers probably had something to do with it too, but I know a battle like that is fought more with mental strength than physical. I didn't have enough of either. You apologized to me just before you left. I don't even know what for. God, I owe you a thousand apologies.

Your ashes coated my hands as I tried futilely to keep holding on to you. I stared at them, waiting— _hoping_ —that I would crumble and disappear too. I didn't want you to be alone, wherever you went. But I stayed behind. I _abandoned_ you.

And that was just the first time.

I spent twenty two days floating through infinity in an alien spaceship slowly starving to death. Every night for twenty two nights I watched it all again in my dreams. When I finally got home, you were still the first thing on my mind. I saw Steve for the first time in ages and the first thing I told him about was you. They were cataloguing the vanished. Your face popped up on the hologram in front of me and I saw it dissolve into pixels. That was the twenty fourth time.

Every time after that was different.

It wasn't enough to replay the same horrific event over and over. My mind got clever with the dream sequences, rehashing enhanced footage of some of the worst events in my life and compounding them with your loss. And believe me, kid, there's plenty of material to play with.

Thirty seven times I watched you explode. Before I met you, before I became the man you chose to idolize in your childish innocence, I was a different person. It took a chest full of shrapnel from a bomb that I made for me to change my ways. I saw it hit the sand in front of me, the logo of my own company staring me in the face and condemning me. Thirty seven times I watched you dive on top of it, shielding me from the blast but getting yourself shredded into mulch for your trouble.

A man named Yinsen saved my life. Sacrificed himself to buy me time to escape from my captors. I saw him just as he died. I stood there in that clunky metal suit we'd built _together_ to escape _together_ and I didn't have any way to save him. He died on the cave floor, bloodied from the shots of the men who had kidnapped us. Seventy three times, I saw you there instead.

An old friend who turned out to be a new enemy nearly took my life. On multiple occasions, I learned. He paralyzed me and looked me right in the eye as he ripped my life out from my chest and left me for dead. Ninety one times he paralyzed me, but instead of reaching for my heart he reached for yours. Those were the worst times, watching his hand emerge coated in red while your eyes widened in shock then dimmed to nothing.

Fifty eight times Ivan Vanko sliced you to bits on the racetrack in Monaco with his electrified whips powered by tech that his father and mine built together.

I flew a nuclear bomb through a wormhole in New York one time. It somehow became a defining moment both in my career as a superhero and in my downward spiral. I carried it like a battering ram, intent only on getting it as far from the city as possible. Though I don't remember, I was told I fell through the portal just before it closed and the Hulk caught me before I could crash. Eighty six times, something snatched the bomb from my arms. You carried it like a goddamn football, web-swinging towards the wormhole like you were running for the winning touchdown. You succeeded, of course you did, but no red-and-blue-clad figure fell back through before the portal sealed you away forever.

I thought I lost Pepper during a fight against another old enemy of mine. I failed to catch her as she plummeted into a vat of fire. Sixty five times, it was your hand that just barely slipped out of my grasp.

A woman told me that her son was crushed by a building in Sokovia. Killed because of a murderous AI that I created. That's what drove me into the war that I recruited you for, kid. Seventy one times, I experienced exactly what that woman did.

I benched you during that fight at the airport. You fought me on it, briefly, but you listened. I couldn't live with myself if you got hurt on my watch. My best friend Rhodey _did_ get hurt on my watch, and no matter how many improvements I made to his braces or his suit I never made it up to him. I flew after him with all the power the suit possessed and I still wasn't fast enough to stop his fall. Twenty nine times I flew after a falling Rhodey, only to blink and have him turn into you. You hit the ground with a sickening crunch and I landed by your side mere seconds too late. I pulled off your mask and looked into your empty eyes, hating myself more than I ever hated the team we were fighting.

I saw the video of what really happened to my parents. Learned that my teammate had been lying to me for years. I watched a man strangle my innocent mother with his bare, metal hand. Fifty five times I saw another version of that grainy little video. You swung onto the scene and stood between my mother and the soldier hell-bent on killing her. He shot you right in the chest and stepped over your body to get to Mom.

Thirty two times you fought alongside me as I battled Rogers and Barnes over what they'd done to my parents and to me. The shield slammed down on my chest hard enough to crack the reactor powering the suit, and then it slammed down on you.

After the Staten Island ferry incident, I told you that if you died I'd feel like that's on me. Only now do I know just how right I was. Sixty four times I arrived too late to save the ferry, but just in time to watch you drown as you sank with it.

My daughter entered this world about a year after you left it. She could never replace you, but her presence fulfilled some of the purpose I'd been lacking ever since I failed you. It also invited new horrors. My subconscious particularly liked these horrors. Two hundred twenty one times I watched you turn to dust exactly as you had the first time, but then I turned my head and my precious Morgan crumbled and blew away too, her ashes mixing with yours in the breeze.

Those twenty two days in space with Nebula were some of the worst of my life. Which says a lot, given what kind of life I've led. But they were even worse the ninety four times you were there with me, your super-spider metabolism burning bright enough to ensure you succumbed to starvation long before our golden-haired rescue squad arrived.

I spent five years watching you die. Which is why, upon seeing you _alive_ , stumbling towards me with light in your eyes to ramble about everything that just happened, all your innocent juvenility leaking out and warming me to the core, I can think of nothing but wrapping you up in my arms and clinging to you with every ounce of strength I possess. I've held your lifeless form so many times in my nightmares that to hold you alive feels like a dream. You're not blown to smithereens, shot bloody, burned, crushed, drowned, or dusted. You're _right here_ in front of me, where I've wanted you to be every second of every day since you disappeared.

I watched you die not just the once, but a thousand times.

The first time was the worst, but then every time after was worse than that. Over and over again, reinforcing the same fact, ramming it down my throat as if I hadn't already swallowed that bitter knowledge every single day since the first. Every time left me breathless and shaky, drowned by the overwhelming sense that I failed you in the one duty I set out to uphold above all others.

This time, I will not fail.


	2. The Thousand and First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not much, but I wanted to wrap this up and leave it on a slightly more positive note.

For me it was the thousandth and first time; for you, only the first and—I hope—the only. I finally succeeded in protecting you, and everyone else while I was at it. I saved your life as Strange saved mine five years ago. And God I hope you don't view my sacrifice in the same way I viewed his, as an event that only served to heap a guilt the size of the universe onto my trembling shoulders. I didn't think I deserved to be saved, but now I understand it was for a purpose. Strange saved me so that I could save everyone. So that I could save you. And kid, you deserve to be saved more than anyone.

I never got to tell you that you're the only reason I agreed to help with this mission in the first place. There's a lot that I never got to tell you, but I know Pepper will ensure that you know at least everything that she knows about us. There is some that I never told even her, things that were for your ears only. What I wouldn't give to say them to you now, during this thousand and first time I'm watching you die.

This time is the opposite of the first. I'm seeing what you saw those thousand other times, and I'm learning that it's not any easier on this side of things. Instead of watching you torn apart, I'm watching you barely hold yourself together. I want to take this grief away from you; I've carried it a thousand times, what's one more? But it's not a load I can simply lift from your shoulders. I can only leave you now and hope that you bear it with more grace than I did.

I don't know if I believe in Heaven, but if there's any way that I can watch over you after I go you'd better believe I will be glued to that screen for all eternity. Because I watched you die not just the once but a thousand times, and I will know no greater satisfaction than finally watching you _live_.


End file.
